Educating the public on the intersection of the death penalty and severe mental illness.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Independent Investigation of Death Row Inmate's Suicide

Fort Bend Now reports that the Office of the Inspector General will be conducting an investigation into the suicide of mentally ill death row inmate William Robinson ("Office Of Inspector General To Review Prison Suicide," February 7, 2008). Robinson, 49, was found hanging by a bed sheet on February 1, 2008 in the Jester IV Unit, a mental health unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice."Such an investigation is conducted any time a prisoner dies in custody, TDCJ spokesman Jason Clark said.'Anytime there is a death of an offender, the Office of Inspector General is notified,' Clark said. 'The OIG is a separate entity and they conduct a thorough investigation.'

Clark stressed that there are no indications that the case was anything other than a suicide and that the OIG investigation is routine.

Robinson, 49, was found hanging by a bed sheet early yesterday morning in his single-man cell at the Jester 4 unit in eastern Fort Bend County. Robinson was being held in Jester 4, a mental health unit within the prison system, for evaluation following what the prison system described as 'mutilation' incidents. ...""Prison system spokesperson Michelle Lyons said that Robinson had been confined in the Jester unit since last September. While Lyons was not able to discuss the nature of Robinson’s emotional disorder due to privacy restrictions, Lyons did confirm that he had previously been treated at the unit 'on several occasions.'Robinson was awaiting death by lethal injection for the 1985 robbery and murder of 26-year-old Steven Creasey in the Montrose area of Houston."Read the full article.More information is available here.

1 comment:

Hey, i am writing a paper in suicide in prison and you blog was very interesting to me. I wanted to ask you a question, why we try to prevent the suicide of inmates in Death row. so we can kill them, so we dont want them to kill their self because we as a institution want to take "pleasure" on taking someones life? This just doesnt make sens to me! if you can tell me more about this i would love to hear.

Contributors

Facts about Mental Illness and the Death Penalty

· The State of Texas ranks 47th nationally in terms of per capita spending on mental healthcare, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. It ranks 1st in executions (more than 400 since 1982).

· Around 30 percent of those incarcerated in Texas prison or jails have been clients of the state’s public mental health system. (TX Department of Criminal Justice)

· The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the death penalty for people with mental retardation, but it has not excluded offenders with severe mental illness from this punishment. Texas law also does not adequately protect those with diminished capacity from a death sentence.

· At least 20 individuals with documented diagnoses of paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other persistent and severe mental illnesses have been executed by the State of Texas. Many had sought treatment before the commission of their crimes, but were denied long-term care.